


Kin

by Lionescence, Meteorysh



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, blade of marmora, post-s2, some strong language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 16:19:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11627247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lionescence/pseuds/Lionescence, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meteorysh/pseuds/Meteorysh
Summary: With the Black Paladin gone, Kolivan decides to stay on board the Castle of Lions. He has his reasons.There is a young Galra aboard, and no matter how long it has been, instincts are instincts and they cannot be denied.





	Kin

**Author's Note:**

> We're so excited to finally share this fic with you! We both had a bunch of ups and downs while creating this story and its art, but it's here now and we're very proud of it and we hope you'll enjoy it as much as we have creating it. 
> 
> This was written for the Voltron Gen Mini Bang on Tumblr: https://voltrongenminibang.tumblr.com/
> 
> and my partner is the incredibly talented Meteorysh, and you can see more of her work here: http://meteorysh.tumblr.com/
> 
> I was so excited when I found out she was my partner because she has done so many wonderful pieces featuring the Blade of Marmora, and she has done an absolutely beautiful piece of this story.

The first few days without the Black Paladin were the worst.

Kolivan found himself needing to stay aboard the Castle of Lions, convincing himself that he was just as able to lead and instruct his fellow Blades from there, that it would be pertinent that he stay with this point of communication rather than return to the base between the black holes. That was what he told himself.

What was true was that Coran had told him how old the remaining the Paladins were, how the Black Paladin was only a little older than the eldest left behind, and that the loss was hard on them, and it was hard to deny his Galran instincts. He’d needed most of a day alone to come to terms with the fact that he would never let the Blue or Yellow Paladins out to battle for at least another two seasons, never mind the Green Paladin. Yet here they were, young and unprepared and irrepressible and brave and so unlike any other species he’d ever known.

They were missing an older brother. ( _Missing_. Not lost. The four had silently agreed on the terminology. Because human resilience was a remarkable thing.) He could understand that. Within a short period of time he’d lost Ulaz and Thace. Antok died right before his eyes. Death was not unknown amongst the Blade; if anything it was expected. But that did not make loss any easier.

He’d lost many brothers and sisters, just as many fathers and mothers. So he stayed.

Stayed through the three brothers — only barely men — and their one sister tirelessly searching for their eldest. The sister, Pidge, scanned the the space they’d been in, been through, re-entered. The big one, Hunk, assisted her, working on hardware even as she adapted and rebuilt software to help their search. The tall one, Lance, supported them: got them anything and everything they asked for, because he hadn’t their skill. If they didn’t immediately need him, he sent himself out on patrols, both to search and to secure. Previously, his energies had been spent trying to console their fourth.

Their half-human brother, who remained inconsolable.

Keith spent the first three days frantic, flying relentlessly for as long and as far as he could, searching. When the Red Lion brought him back exhausted— and it was always that way around; the Red Lion remained fiercely protective of her paladin, even against his wishes — he would be found screaming at the Black Lion, begging to be let in, begging for answers, until he was voiceless and raw and on his knees. On the fourth day when the Red Lion returned sooner than anticipated and practically spat out her paladin onto the hangar floor, weak and shivering with fever, the Blue Paladin had taken it upon himself to yell at the Red until both were in tears and each other’s arms, mourning, desperate, and lost.

Again, Kolivan could understand. So he stayed.

A little over a week and a half had passed since their decisive battle, and even Kolivan had to admit the losses were greater than the gains thus far. His agents had yet to return with anything concrete regarding Zarkon’s death, or what became of Haggar and the Druids. One brought rumours of a summoning of the exiled prince, but Kolivan kept that in the back of his mind for the now. He wanted at least one more source for that rumour before he would bring it to the Princess’s attention. If such rumours were true, then they had to act, but until proven so, the Paladins needed time that he would normally not allow.

Children. They’d brought children to war.

After another long dialogue with the Princess — it heartened him that they were getting along better now, and spoke more and more like allies of centuries past than enemies of present — he took himself on a walk through the Castle, clicking through various messages and reports via his tablet. He turned a corner, and a body slammed into him. Given his size and stature, he remained still, whilst the body landed on the floor.

“Ow! _Dammit_ , why are you guys so damned big?” Lance groused, rubbing his tailbone where he’d landed on it. “Like walking into a brick shithouse…” He shook himself then, and brought himself back to his feet. “Sorry, Kolivan. Didn’t mean to run into you.”

“It is nothing, Paladin,” Kolivan allowed. “You were distracted.” He could not blame him; they were all distracted.

Lance snorted at that. “Distracted? Uh-uh. No. I am currently royally _pissed off_.”

The Galran took a moment to absorb that. “Ah. Something has displeased you.”

“Oh. Oh yeah,” he chuckled, dry as dust. “Some _one_ has definitely putting-it-mildly displeased me. I mean, sweet holy cheese why can’t he just _listen_!”

 _Ah_. “I take it you mean the Red Paladin.”

“Of course I mean the Red I-Have-A-Fucking-Death-Wish-Hold-My-Beer Paladin! Who _else_ would I be yelling about!”

Truly, the Red and Blue Paladins reminded Kolivan much of himself and Antok. They’d spent their youths at each other’s throats, fierce rivalry growing into an unbreakable trust that lasted till Antok’s last breath. They’d frustrated their fathers with their constant arguing, then demonstrated a synchronicity that few could emulate, which served to only further frustrate their fathers as well as their peers. Antok had always been the first to insult him, but also the first to defend him, and he had done the same.

That Lance looked ready to maim Keith with his bare hands now when only days ago he could not be persuaded away from his sickbed was not unfamiliar to Kolivan.

“That _idiot_ ,” the Blue Paladin was saying, “is out of his room. Out of _bed. Again_. I swear to god if he’s on the training deck I will kill him. That thankless bastard’s only just got his feet back under him and he thinks he can take on the whole damn universe.”

Kolivan simply shrugged. “He is merely doing what makes sense to him.”

“Well it doesn’t make sense to the rest of us, okay?!” And the Galra found himself nearly stepping back from the much smaller human’s outburst. “I get it! He’s upset about Shiro. He wants to find him. Fuck it, we _all_ do! But he’s the only one of us who’s going to end up killing himself before we get anywhere!” Lance swiped a hand across his face, like he wanted to tear his eyes out in frustration, breathing hard and tired. “He has —” and he softened then, like a switch flicking off, shoulders slumping with the weight of the world. Kolivan felt deeply for him, knowing that none of that weight was asked for. “He has no _fucking_ idea how much he scared us. And we have no idea what to do with him. We don’t know what happened after the first time Shiro went missing. Shit, if it was anything like _this_ … and he was _alone_ …”

That stirred something in him, and before he knew it, he said, “I will go look for the Red Paladin, and I will talk to him.”

Lance blinked up at him, something hesitant in his features, even though it had been clear for some time now that all the Paladins were accepting of the Blade of Marmora as their allies and have got used to being in close quarters with them. He heaved a deep breath, then nodded. “Okay. Yeah. Thanks. That would… that would be great, actually. I mean, for one, you’ll definitely be able to just haul his ass. Like, pick him up and just, y’know.”

He walked past Kolivan, then stopped, shaking his head as if he’d failed somehow. “I guess if we can’t get through to his human side, maybe you’ll have better luck with his Galran side, huh?”

Kolivan didn’t know what to say to that, and as Lance disappeared from view, he realized he’d said nothing at all.

 

 

 

Keith was, in fact, on the training deck. And Lance was right: he had no business being there. Kolivan hadn’t been aboard long enough to know the inner workings of the levels of training on the deck, but he could tell that the Red Paladin was working on a level that he could normally manage on better days. And he’d seen the boy fight.

His timing was off, for one. Everything seemed to come a second or two slower than it should, as if he were moving through water. There was a heaviness, too: a sidestep too short, a deflection too low, a thrust half an inch off the mark. But Kolivan could see him dig deep, and hard, for whatever that fueled him, that he would pull strength from somewhere unknown to anyone but Keith himself, and send it into his hands, his mind, his heart.

Kolivan never told Keith that not a single Blade as young as he had gone so far through the Trials. Now that he knew of the Paladin’s Galra heritage, it was obvious. The ferocity with which he fought, the way he overcame pain, that thirst to win was pure Galra. But the tenacity, the will to continue, the impulsive, unclinical way he tore through everything: perhaps that was something more human. Perhaps that was something entirely Keith.

The Altean gladiator thrust again, and Keith raised his sword to parry, but again it was a touch slower, a touch weaker, and Kolivan felt as much as heard the ringing of metal on metal, eyeing the shudder in Keith’s shoulders.

No. The one shoulder. The right. His Trial wound.

The parry collapsed, and Keith whirled himself away, dropping to one knee to avoid the blow that sailed over his head. He brought his sword across the back of the gladiator’s thighs, overbalancing it, but as it fell it swung again and the metal staff in its hand caught Keith in the shoulder — the right, _again_ the right — and sent him flying across the room with a pained cry.

Kolivan fought the urge to step forward, to call off the simulation. The boy had his pride. He would not wound it. He would trust him.

The Red Paladin rolled up into a crouch, rubbing the wrist of the hand that still held his bayard. Had it bent oddly when he blocked that blow, Kolivan wondered. His shoulder had held, so he had to have absorbed a lot of that force. Perhaps he should call this simulation to an end…

But Keith only sprung forward again, having switched his bayard to his other hand — which was his dominant one? Kolivan had failed to observe that — and made for a cross cut on the gladiator’s back, only for it to turn and catch it in a block, thrusting downwards. Kolivan could only watch as Keith’s knee slammed to the floor, the other foot folding painfully underneath his weight, then felt a sick kind of alarm as the folded foot struck out into the gladiator’s groin, forcing it to fold forward, sliding neatly into the shining blade of the bayard.

Keith showed very little by way of pain as the gladiator bot vanished, ending the simulation. He stood, breathing hard, then taking a single deep breath and letting it out in a single sharp shock. Kolivan observed two more such breaths, before they evened out, slow and steady and tired. The bayard flashed back to its neutral form, and the lightness of it allowed Keith to raise his arm to wipe the sweat off his brow, rub the weariness from his eyes. It took a few more seconds, but the Red Paladin soon became aware he had an audience, and he looked up, a scowl slashed across his face but the fire of the fight still in his eyes.

“Yeah, yeah. I know. I shouldn’t be here.”

“I am not the one who should dictate where you should and shouldn’t be, kit,” Kolivan replied, entering the room fully, making his way towards the young Paladin. “However, that you feel so chastised without my saying anything tells me you’re perfectly aware that your teammates are worried about you.”

At that, Keith’s scowl softened, but he turned away, moving towards the bench where he’d left his jacket and a few water pouches. Kolivan didn’t follow immediately, briefly rendered still by the fact that Keith didn’t walk so much as stalk, like a wild cat, but that he was walking well at all.

“You are uninjured.” He couldn’t quite form it into a question.

Keith shrugged as he sat down, punching a straw into a water pouch and drinking deeply from it. “I’m fine,” he said, though there was a touch of guilt in his voice. “I just couldn’t stand being in bed anymore.”

Kolivan watched. The Paladin’s body language was tired, but relaxed, a looseness to the upper body that was welcoming and unguarded. He wondered if the boy was aware of how clear his body language was to a Galra; Allura and Hunk had both described Keith as quiet and aloof, but kind. That they could never really tell what he was thinking despite the fact he can be rather expressive.

Of course, they were using human parameters. To him, Keith could not be clearer in what he was thinking and feeling, so much like a newborn kit. It struck a melancholic note within him, for it had been a long time since he or any of the Blade had seen young Galra. Keith was an unexpected miracle.

“I had thought you’d perhaps had injured your wrist, kit, when you blocked that blow,” he said instead, unwilling to give in to his quieter thoughts. “Your ankle, I certainly thought would be sprained, the way you fell on it.” He resisted the urge to crouch down and take that ankle into his hands, to check it over himself. He’d done well thus far, letting Keith complete his training run instead of stopping it, and doing what Lance had suggested and simply grab him, throw him over his shoulder, and shunt him back into his room for proper rest. He’d spent years schooling his demeanour into that of a fearless, honourable leader who would bend to nothing and no one.

How strange that the few short weeks around Keith had nearly undone it all. How strange that despite decades, his parental instincts were as present as ever.

Keith, however, seemed remarkably unconcerned. “That? Oh. That just… kinda happens.” As if to demonstrate, he raised one leg straight out in front of him, and rotated his ankle back and forth, the range of movement growing each time. “I kinda have really, really bendy small joints.”

Kolivan sat beside him, raised a hand in decline when Keith offered him a water pouch. “Bendy.” Again, a question that failed to be a question.

With a shrug, Keith shifted his gaze down, which Kolivan followed. The Galra watched as the boy rotated his left foot inwards, until his toes pointed towards his right ankle. He did the same with the right, and both sets of toes were touching. Then he shifted them further, until they were nearly pointing behind them.

Kolivan looked back up to find Keith wearing the smallest smile, the first he’d seen since Shiro disappeared. “First time I did this someone threw up.”

“Whyever would they?” he returned, and invited Keith to look down as he, too, rotated his feet until they were pointing in the wrong direction.

It amused him deeply when all Keith had to say to that was a soft, “Huh”, punctuated with the tilt of his head. They both corrected their feet, and stared at each other for a moment, before Keith raised his right arm and asked, “This?”

He grabbed his fingertips and slowly bent his wrist backwards, further and further until his middle finger touched the back of his forearm. Kolivan easily imitated the gesture, even going so far as to press his forefinger and ring finger to his arm as well. They mirrored each other well, allowing him to note how soft and fine-boned the Red Paladin was compared to his claws and huge stature.

The initial curiosity and delight seemed to fade from the boy, and he retreated — not so quickly as he would normally — back into himself, hugging his middle, shoulders slumped forwards. “I guess that explains that,” he said. It wasn’t bitter, or sad. He didn’t seem happy about it, either. If anything, he sounded resigned, that edge of hopelessness that Kolivan had first heard after the Trials, that Shiro so quickly responded to with his gentle strength and faith in his friend.

“I suppose it does, kit. For better or worse,” he offered. “You had no knowledge of your heritage, and still we have not made the effort in educating you. It may bring you some kind of peace if you were to know.”

Keith scoffed at that, sharp and unkind, and shook his head. “Would it? Would it really? What is there to know? Turns out I fight the way I do because I’m Galra, and I can open doors and use Galra technology because I’m Galra. All it tells me is that I’m a good weapon.”

“You are more than that, kit.”

“Please,” he spat. “You call yourselves the _Blade_ of Marmora. Thace called me a Blade before he died. My whole fucking life was wrapped up in this _stupid_ knife —” He reached behind him and pulled the knife out of its sheath, its symbol shining bright between them. “— and all it’s done is tell me I’m less than human!”

Kolivan found himself fighting, again. Fighting the urge to reach over and hold the boy. Hold him close enough that he would feel and hear the vibrations of his purring so he would calm down. His ears were not Galran, but maybe carding through his hair would bring the same comfort. But there were boundaries. Keith had not been brought up Galra, and so those boundaries remained.

“Kit. That is enough —”

“My name is _Keith_!” And with that all the fight left him, utterly. Keith collapsed into himself, the knife slipping from his hands to clatter onto the floor at his feet. His hands went up into his hair, his arms closing his whole body off, as if all he wanted in the world was to deny and deny and deny, to disappear despite proclaiming his name so clearly.

To Kolivan, what was true was that Keith was afraid. And he understood that. That was why he stayed.

He waited, then. Waited until the bend of the Red Paladin’s back softened, until his elbows slowly dropped to rest on his thighs, until his breathing evened out from its angry, panicked rush. When enough cues were read, Kolivan reached his hand out (and it _terrified_ him that his hand was so large that it spanned the small of Keith’s back, yet made him proud that Keith never hesitated to take down anyone or anything his size, or even greater) and gently set it between his trembling shoulders, nothing more than a comforting weight that he hoped would anchor the boy.

“I know that that is your name, Keith,” Kolivan began, a tenor to his voice that was last used so long ago it seemed new. “I call you ‘kit’, because as Galra that is what you are. You are young, and while you may be an adult on Earth, among the Galra you are barely older than one of your Earth children. Had Antok and Thace lived, had Ulaz known before he died, they, too, would have called you kit. It is how we address our children, but you did not know, and for that, I am sorry.”

It was some time before the trembling under his hand stopped, and a very small voice spoke. “But I’m not your child. Why would — why would you call me that?”

“Ah,” Kolivan said. “Because we have no… familial boundaries, as it were. Antok, Thace, and Ulaz were all my brothers, but we do not have the same mothers or fathers. It’s of no matter to us. Had I known any of their parents, they would have been, to me, my mothers and fathers, as mine would have been to them.”

A small movement, and a single violet eye peeked through dark hair, still half-hiding in his arms. “My mother would have called me kit?”

Kolivan nodded, though he thought the question strange. “Of course. And perhaps any number of other endearments that we have heard only from our own parents. You must understand, Keith: we have not seen a child of the Galra living freely for a very long time. That you are here, that you exist, gives me hope.”

Keith unfurled at last at that, head cocked in that way when he was in deep thought. He made no move to collect his knife from the floor, only left his hands to hang idly between his knees. “That was what Ulaz told Shiro. Shiro… he said, Ulaz told him that he gave people hope, when he was a prisoner in the arena.” He chuckled, low in his throat, and added, “But then, he would. He’s _Shiro_.”

“Ulaz was correct. And I fear I have spoken far too unkindly of him in the past. He was right to free Shiro, to risk his place in our mission. If not for that, we would not have Voltron, and all the hope it carries.”

He heard Keith hum in agreement, but sadness rolled off the boy in waves, the same sadness that permeated the Castle. Yes, there was hope. But now there was doubt, because they were all missing a Paladin, and that left Voltron without a Black Lion, without a head. It left this mismatched family broken, a yawning gap where there should be another brother.

“You miss him,” Kolivan ventured. He knew he ought to tread lightly. The Trials were not that long ago, and the memory of Shiro from that time remained fresh for both of them, from two different points of view. There was a strong bond between them, of that Kolivan was certain. But still, he would be careful.

“He was —” Keith shook his head, clenched his fists before loosening them again, as though berating himself. “He _is_ all the family I have. At the Garrison, at least. No one wanted me, and I was alone for… a long time. No one gave a damn about me until Shiro. And, sometimes I have to try and not think about what would have happened if he hadn’t.”

His greatest hopes and fears. A life debt. That explained a lot. Except... “What do you mean, ‘no one wanted you’?”

Keith shrugged. “Well, no one did. I’m an orphan. I stayed in the foster system, bounced from family to family and never really had anyone who wanted to keep me. Not until I got into the Garrison.” His breath shuddered then, but he pressed on. “Not until Shiro. And I guess, now, Voltron.”

All those words made sense, but also did not make sense. Kolivan felt overwhelmed and out of his depth, and he never imagined that it would be something like this that would make him feel that way. “But you were a _child_.” He still _was_ a child, barely.

Another shrug. And this one pained Kolivan. This was no story, no cautionary tale. This was a life lived in a way that as far as he was concerned should not have been allowed, not even imagined. Keith sat there speaking so matter-of-factly, as if there was nothing else. No options. That that was his lot and that was that. “Guess not all children are created equal. I wasn’t a good bet. Marked for trouble. No one wanted to deal with that.”

“But were you? Trouble, that is?”

“Depends on the day of the week,” Keith said, rolling his shoulder to get the stiffness out of it. “Sometimes being late for dinner was trouble. Sometimes getting into a fight was trouble. Doesn’t matter if I was the smaller kid. Sometimes speaking was trouble. Or not speaking.” The boy looked at him now, eyes hard and tired. “You told Shiro the Trials weren’t meant to be fair, because fighting Zarkon wasn’t fair. I already knew about unfair fights before that. I always have.”

Kolivan had no idea what to say. That a child had been orphaned was already hard to swallow, but that he was so willingly abandoned, clearly more than once, clearly _repeatedly_ , was unspeakable. He’d assumed that Keith had a family, like the one Pidge was desperately tracking down, the one Hunk talked about when he talked about food, the one that Lance could not stop missing no matter how hard he tried. How could Keith not have had a family at all? How was it possible for one to live as long as he had _alone_? How barbaric _were_ these humans? Who were they to think that the Galra were so foul if they cared nothing for their children?

“Keith,” he said, and he fought to continue speaking without gritting his teeth. “I will tell you this now, so listen. Had you been born amongst the Galra, the moment you became parentless, you would have been taken in by any family. There might even have been a dispute over who would get to keep you and raise you. And even then it would not matter. You would have been welcome in any home, to eat and sleep and play. You would have had mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters.”

At Keith’s incredulous, open-mouthed expression, he moved his hand from his shoulders, resting it lightly on the crown of the Paladin’s head, again, only enough to act as an anchor. “We Galra are a warrior race, that is true, but we also deeply proud of our family bonds, of our principles. We have always held that our food, our shelter, our knowledge, and our care, are meant for all of us, and that none should go without. Especially children.”

Kolivan shook his head then, sighing. “You must understand: children are uncommon among the Galra. So when they arrive, they are precious. That you are able to exist, half human, half Galra, when pure Galra infants are so easily lost…” And his hand never felt more enormous than it did when he moves it to frame the side of Keith’s face. “You are a gift, Keith. And I am sorry the humans who dealt with you could not see that.”

There was something he couldn’t quite identify in the boy’s eyes at that moment. They were bright, brighter than they’d been in days, brighter than they’d been since Shiro disappeared. There was something shining and delicate that he couldn’t quite pin down until the first droplet escaped from the corner of one eye and ran swiftly down to touch his palm.

Oh.

Kolivan did not move. Instead he listened: to the stuttering breaths in the boy’s chest, the tight swallow in his throat, and the very, very quiet whisper of, “Gift?” Another swallow, a much more tremulous breath, another droplet against his enormous clawed hand. “I… I’m a g-gift?”

“Of course. You are a child of the Galra. Any one of the Blade would be proud to call you their son.” And just now, just this once, because he understood, because this was why he stayed, he said, “ _I_ would be honoured to have you as a son.”

It was slow, what happened next. The gentle press of Keith’s cheek against his palm, the gravity of sorrow and relief pulling his smaller body forwards. Kolivan’s other hand came up with deliberate weight, encircling the Red Paladin until he was flush and solid against his chest, where his instincts had wanted him to be since the battle against Zarkon ended, since he watched Antok fall and found himself with a desperate need to ensure that the youngest Galra in his midst was unharmed.

Keith did not cry the same way he did days ago. He was much quieter, much more contained. The only evidence of his emotions came from how his narrow back shuddered and faint smell of saltwater only tangible to a pure Galra nose. Kolivan allowed himself to rake a hand through the mass of dark hair, softer than he expected, much silkier than Galra fur and strangely pleasant to the touch, careful to not dig too hard and to skirt around delicate human ears. The gesture softened Keith’s body further, and Kolivan found himself bearing his full weight within minutes.

A low rumble escaped him, before he said, “You are small. You have no claws, no sharp teeth. Your skin is fair and hairless and your ears are… I fail to see how they may be useful.” There was a hiccup at that, and Kolivan decided it was an attempt at a laugh. “But you are Galra, and by that alone you belong with us, if that is your choice. When there is time, I will teach you what I can of our culture, and perhaps you and the Paladins can teach me about yours. And when this is all over, if Earth does not call to you, you have a place with the Blade. Do you understand?”

Keith nodded against his chest, and then briefly, shyly, peeked up, craning his neck to make eye contact. “You… you can call me kit, if you want. I guess.”

“I would like that.”

He curled Keith closer against him, imagining a reality where there was peace, and he had a child to hold, just like this, and purred.

 

 

 

 

 

Lance came round the corner just as Kolivan exited the training deck, a sleeping Keith cradled in his arms. “Is he okay?”

Kolivan nodded. “He is asleep. Deeply so. The last of his fever is leaving him now.”

“Oh good,” Lance sighed, the tension he arrived with draining away almost instantly. “That’s good. You gonna put him to bed?”

“Yes,” he replied, striding towards the Paladins’ private quarters. “I suggest that you and the others take rest as well. Tomorrow we will regroup and begin our search for Shiro in earnest.”

For a moment, Kolivan thought Lance would follow, but instead he heard, “Is Keith going to be okay? I mean, we can do this, right?”

He paused, taking care to not jostle his cargo too much, and looked over his shoulder at the Blue Paladin. “He has the ferocity of the Galra and the resilience of you humans. And above all, he is Keith, and the Red Paladin. Together, we will find Shiro.”

It felt good to see Lance smile, genuine and sure. “Okay. Okay, great. I’ll tell the others. We’re gonna do this.”

“Indeed we are,” Kolivan returned, and resumed his journey. “Now please excuse me. I have a kit to set down.”

He pretended not to hear Lance’s smirk, hoped that Keith would be not too angry at him for giving his so-called rival ammunition for teasing, and in his arms, Keith made a low noise that sounded remarkably like a purr.

 

 

 


End file.
